PATHOGENIC
Remember Osmosis Jones? I was a fan, really. And not for the first time I was enchanted by this portrayal of our internal microbiology as a thriving civilization, a proper set of tiny living beings having their pre-assigned job decided by their genetic makeup. What was that name of French animated show about explaining human body to children? With anthropomorphic blood cells and such? Yeah, that’s the stuff. I always was quite attracted to this funny portrayal and well, it is just thrilling to explore this strange world of microbiology, where so many things happen invisible to our eyes.
And of course, who wouldn’t like to go on a trip of ripping a human body apart from the insides as a nasty piece of bacterium, am I right? PATHOGENIC lets you visit that internal world but without romanticizing the concept. No anthropomorphism here! Just proper little creatures of cellular membranes and mitochondria, duking it out in our very guts, fighting for survival against our terribly aggressive immune system. It’s a tough life being an invading microbe, trying its best to survive.
What I admire about this game is how delightfully crafted with attention to the theme it feels. It is a twin-stick roguelite – a rather unlikely genre to toss into the human organs – and yet it works spectacularly well thanks to the extreme level of polish on display. The walls of the fleshy labyrinth pulse and twitch. Fluids circulate with visible currents. Various microorganisms undulate and propel themselves on flailing flagella to get their nasty bits introduced to our soft, small body and end our career as a wanna-be-plague. The movement is extremely fluid, variety of enemies each have their own feel, with the way they swim, approach, attack and bounce away. Everything has this organic squish to it, which makes the game feels, well… alive!
And then the stages are distinctly made. Color coded, with unique chamber designs, introducing new traps and obstacles as well as new threats to overcome. Bosses are nasty and have quite a few tricks up their sleeves to keep you in constant check, that is, until you have many runs behind your belt and learn their behaviors intimately. Bah, it even has a whole not-so-secret but still secret final level and final boss you need to do a bit of clue-tracking to get to, which I seriously appreciated.
But all that is just decorum! Excellent decorum, yes, but for a twin-stick shooter rogue what matters is the juiciness of the gameplay, not its visceral, visual ooze. And here is where PATHOGENIC truly shines. It nails the fluidity of combat. It masters the runs pacing. And it offers a hefty coffer of options to play around with. Basically, a masterclass in making a fun, engaging roguelike formula. Let me delve into it a bit more in depth, but each of those statements under a microscope.
Combat is a kinetic dance. Shooting costs stamina, so you can’t just hold your fire button down and hose the screen, especially when you arm your microbe with multiple offensive organelles. You also have limited dodges on a cooldown, and they are crucial for slipping through deluge of enemy projectiles or slipping away from being boxed in. Each chamber is a small combat arena that will check your positioning, reaction time and, well… the heft of your build offensive power.
Pacing is excellent, absolutely peerless! You can beeline your way to a boss, but exploring every nook and cranny of every stage is usually recommended. That way you can scrounge up more resources, stumble into chambers with the collector to buy new bits for your organism or find new organelles just waiting for you to snatch’em and attach to your body. As you defeat enemies and consume their DNA, you evolve, gaining new passive abilities as well as, every now and again, a bigger shift to your biology – changing shape, your internal structure, giving you other bonuses as well as expanding on your build options. More stamina, more health, extra damage to enemies under debuffs, there is always an option of something nice and fitting with your game plan. Each stage length also feels just right – never overstaying its welcome, always fun to explore as well as to blaze through, whichever way feels right to you and your current build.
And then, of course, the build options. There are plenty of great systems here, not just depth of variety in bits and bobs to attach to yourself. First, the heft of your little infestation depends on the number of organs you can fit into yourself. There are external and internal points where you can ‘install’ new biological components that are either weapons, means of improved movements or modifiers that change the way your armaments behave. Those nodes are connected to each other and display an internal flow – so a good build is all about chaining those modifiers together, until your primary weapon is juiced up with so many bonuses it does some crazy stuff all on its own. Then you add a mitochondrion to the mix, giving powerful timed bonuses depending on variety of triggers to further ramp up your power scaling.
It is immensely fun how varied builds you can make. From long distance snipers to charging melee kings that smash other microbes with razor sharp protein blades and chitinous bulbs. You can have a minion build, creating lesser organisms to aid you or spawn deadly bacteriophages. Acid, burn, electrical discharges, all at your disposal to torment the biome of your host. There is always something else to chase, a new synergy to figure out, a fresh combo of organelles to deploy to gain a humongous power spike at a moment’s notice. No run ever feels truly doomed, and I appreciate that.
And that’s not even all that the game brings to the table! PATHOGENIC has a robust meta-progression and challenge system that keeps you coming back for more, again. Each run you gain a special currency that lets you upgrade your chosen microbe with passive buffs and modifiers. Variety of challenges let you unlock new forms to take inside a host – spore, nanomachine, amoeba and more, each not merely a cosmetic change, but a pretty heft shift in core gameplay experience. And then the challenges give you additional variety in runs that are most welcome. Want to play boss rush mode? You got it. Swim in darkness? Gotcha! Have a randomized run with unique starting set of organelles to roll with - it’s all there.
And I just must shine a limelight on another part of this game that got be smiling. The Soundtrack. Damn, it is pure fire. I never expected a twin-stick shooter about flying a microbe through stomach, liver and lungs to have such banger beats, but here we are. The Heart stage music is especially riveting, pumping my veins full of adrenaline as I dash and smash in the beating tempo of a speeding heart rate. Excellent stuff.
PATHOGENIC is a superior example of its genre. Really, I just cannot praise enough the excellence with which it is crafted. Everything just feels so well thought out, curated with care, made with love. Excellent pacing, superb music, stellar vibes. The gooeyness of motion, the squish of impact, the richness of choices when starting each run. Playing run after run, always itching for another go – for a while it was impossible for me to put it down, was just too much fun to keep bashing my head through the stages to see the finish. And then, do it again with a new microbe with a different core playstyle. In short – hours of fun in a tight package that I can recommend to any action roguelike enthusiast.
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